Imprinted
by PhoenixKelley
Summary: What happens when Carlisle brings home a new vampire to the family? And what will happen when she meets Jacob? Post-Eclipse


**Well, Stephenie Meyer is a fricken genius. But I am a bit miffed—actually a lot miffed—that Breaking Dawn ruined this whole fanfic! Damn! So let's pretend the best book ever doesn't exist, all right?**

**Bella POV**

I remember the date Carlisle brought her to us. It was December fourteenth, and I remember because earlier that morning, Alice had been running around, throwing tinsel at everyone and reminding us that there were only eleven days until Christmas.

She had also gotten Emmett to drag an evergreen tree that had to be ten feet tall through our front door. When Carlisle walked through the door, Alice was trying to get Jasper, Edward, Rosalie and I to help her decorate the tree—Emmett and Esme had already heartily agreed, Emmett only because he wanted to stuff the ornaments where he shouldn't. Rosalie and I were watching them, sitting on the couch with Ellie; the feud between us had cooled once I allowed Rosalie to become a sort of second mother to her.

And then Carlisle had kicked the door open, causing everyone to turn and look. I had been laughing at Emmett and the unnatural Santa-shaped bulge in his pants. The whole room silenced very quickly, and I asked quietly, "Who's that?"

There was a thin, red-haired girl lying in his arms.

"Her name is Maeread Evans," he said quietly, looking distracted. "Alice, I need to borrow your room for…a few days."

Watching Maeread convulse in Carlisle's firm hold, putting his words and the signs together, everyone knew in a second what was going on. Most of us had the sense to take the news quietly. Except for Rosalie.

She shrieked with horrified realization. "You _bit_ her?"

Carlisle didn't answer, but I could tell his answer in his eyes. He ran upstairs, with Maeread in his arms. Edward darted after him. Of course I followed.

"What were you thinking?" Edward asked Carlisle quietly.

Carlisle ignored him for a minute, laying Maeread on the prop that was Alice's bed, attempting in vain to stop the wild trembling on her body. It looked like it pained him to see Maeread in agony; it probably did. Carlisle was a compassionate man.

"She was _dying_, Edward. Usually I can do something to save my patients, but in her case…it was incurable. She's not even sixteen years old; I couldn't just watch her die. She deserves a chance to live."

Edward looked anxious. "But what now? Does everyone thinks she's dead, then? What are we going to do when her family and friends expect to go to her funeral? What about her parents?"

"She has no family but her father, and as far as I could tell, no friends. She never had any visitors at the hospital. And her father—" Carlisle shook his head angrily, trying to find the words. "Just _look_ how much her father cares about her." He reached for Maeread's sweatshirt and pulled down her sleeve. At first I thought she was wearing a dark, blotchy shirt, and gasped in horror when I realized that her shoulder and upper arm were covered in a sleeve of ugly purple bruises.

Carlisle's voice was full of fury. "He wouldn't pay for a funeral. He asked me to _dispose_ of her body as soon as she passed."

Maeread was whimpering now, twitching wildly and wailing. It wasn't long before her high-pitched screams brought Esme and Alice to the room, with Jasper and Emmett behind them. Rosalie was nowhere to be found; presumably, she was still downstairs with Ellie.

As Carlisle told his story again, I looked closely at Maeread for the first time. She was fairly good-looking already—she would be unspeakably beautiful as a vampire, like Rosalie. Her hair was shocking cherry-red and fell around her face in ringlets. She was ghostly pale, with a cluster of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were chocolate brown, lined with dark makeup, and snapped open now and then as she screamed.

The day passed slowly. Edward had taken to watching Maeread; I couldn't understand why, but he didn't speak and wouldn't leave her side.

On the second day of Maeread's transformation—and yes, this huge change in our lives had become a way of marking time—Alice took me shopping. As much as I dreaded it, I was the only one in the house not finished with their Christmas shopping. I protested, seeing no reason for us to give each other gifts when we already had just about everything.

"But _you_ don't have everything," Alice said, parking her yellow Porsche in the mall's parking lot.

"But I don't _want_ everything," I moaned. Alice ignored me.

"And this _is_ your first Christmas as a vampire and so we should do something special. Besides, I think the rest of us deserve a nice expensive gift as compensation for putting up with you." She grinned at me and I knew I had lost this argument.

Alice dragged me around the mall, making crisp check marks on a list I didn't remember making and insisting I buy the most expensive things I could find.

Finally, though, we were almost finished. "All right, now all we need is your gift to me, mine to you, and from both of us to Maeread. I say we meet up here in half an hour—is that long enough for you to find something?"

"We're getting gifts for Maeread now? How am I supposed to know what she likes—the whole day that I've known her, she's spent unconscious."

"Well, it would just be rude if you didn't. Oh, I just _love_ what you're getting me!" she squealed.

"So what's the point in me going off by myself? You already know what I'm getting you, it's not a surprise."

"But I need to surprise _you_," Alice smiled sweetly and darted off.

"Whoopee," I grumbled, fingering my credit card and looking for a store that might sell something suitably expensive and unnecessary for Alice.


End file.
